132: Chapter 132 The "Ghost's" Alertness and Reverse Tracking

"Viper" has lost contact.

Only thirty-seven minutes after the mission command was issued, Ghost's footsteps came to a sudden halt in a secluded alley two blocks away from Warehouse No. 3. On his wrist, the device connected to Viper's one-way vital signs monitor showed the green indicator light—representing Viper's life status—suddenly turn into a steady yellow without any warning. This meant the target had been forcibly sedated or anesthetized, losing consciousness and the ability to act, but was not in mortal danger.

It wasn't a violent red (indicating heavy injury or death), but yellow, representing being controlled.

Ghost knew Viper's skills all too well. This was a top-tier field specialist who could single-handedly take down a small armed camp in the Latin American jungle and steal core blueprints from a tightly guarded defense exhibition in Eastern Europe. Even if he encountered an ambush, it was absolutely impossible for him to fall silently into such a "controlled" state within a mere half hour without sending out a single warning or signal of intense resistance.

Unless... it was a tailor-made, inescapable death trap designed specifically for him.

Cold sweat instantly broke out on Ghost's back—not from fear, but from the bone-chilling realization of being outmaneuvered by a superior hunter. He lunged into the shadows of the cold brick wall, forcibly suppressing his breathing to the minimum and heightening all his senses to the extreme, as alert as a startled nocturnal animal.

He was wrong. Terribly wrong.

That energy signature, the clue that seemed so difficult to break through and obtain, the hiding spot that followed all logic... they were all bait! A top-tier bait so meticulously crafted that even a skeptic like him believed it to be real!

The opponent had not only predicted his tracking logic but even anticipated his use of Viper and Viper's operational patterns! This was an all-around crushing defeat, from the informational level to the psychological and physical levels.

"Calm down... I must stay calm..." Ghost repeatedly warned himself in his mind. The more desperate the situation, the more absolute calm was needed. He did not attempt to contact Viper or any other potentially compromised nodes, nor did he immediately flee in a panic. Since the opponent could precisely capture Viper, the vicinity must be crawling with eyes. Any abnormal movement could turn him into a locked-on target.

He maintained his posture leaning against the corner of the wall, as if he were just a tired worker returning late and taking a short rest, but his brain was racing at an unprecedented speed.

First, the fact that Viper was controlled meant the opponent's goal, at least for now, was not to eliminate them but to capture and interrogate. This gave him an extremely narrow window of time.

Secondly, for the opponent to set such a massive trap, the target was definitely not just Viper, who was merely a tool. The true target was him, Ghost—or rather, to use him to completely wipe out this infiltration operation and even... track back to the network behind him.

In that case, his current location—this position where he was "approaching" the trap—was likely already under the opponent's surveillance. They might be waiting for him to continue forward into a second trap, or they would move in to capture him the moment he "perceived the danger and retreated."

He couldn't go forward, and he couldn't retreat the way he came.

Ghost's eyes, like the most precise scanner, slowly swept over every detail of the alley. The crisscrossing old wires overhead, the drainpipe at the corner, the silhouette of the low roof opposite, the cracks in the broken stone slabs on the ground... He was looking for a "blind spot" or "weak point" in the opponent's dragnet that might be unavoidable when setting things up based on conventional logic.

His gaze finally fixed on the middle of the alley, beneath a semi-collapsed abandoned gatehouse piled with construction debris and dead leaves. In the view of his night-vision goggles, beneath a piece of old asbestos tile that seemed randomly placed, the color of the soil seemed to have an extremely subtle difference—it was a sign of recent loosening, and the technique was quite crude, not looking like a professional trap setup, but more like...

"Traces of a vagrant or small animal digging..." Ghost's heart stirred. He recalled a detail from when he reviewed the old maps of this area: beneath this old industrial zone were long-abandoned air-raid shelters and drainage networks built in the early days of the country's founding, many entrances of which had long been forgotten.

Perhaps that wasn't a "passage," but it could be a "gap."

Time to gamble!

Ghost moved. He didn't head toward those traces; instead, he suddenly accelerated, rushing toward the other exit of the alley. His footsteps were heavy, creating clear echoes in the silent night, sounding like a panicked person trying to escape. This move instantly attracted the fine-tuning of at least three surveillance cameras from different directions in the dark.

Just as he was about to burst out of the alley entrance, his right hand seemingly casually flicked backward. A button-sized black object traced a low arc and landed precisely behind a pile of abandoned oil drums in the middle of the alley.

Poof!

A faint explosion sounded, followed by pungent smoke and a sudden burst of intense light! Although the power was deliberately kept small, it was enough to instantly create a small range of visual and olfactory interference and trigger the "abnormal event" alarms of most security systems.

Almost at the same moment he threw it, Ghost used a posture and speed that completely defied the laws of physics, kicking off the side wall to make a sharp turn. He darted back like a true ghost close to the ground, his target aimed directly at that suspicious asbestos tile!

His movement was so fast it was only a blur. Under the cover of the smoke and bright light, he reached the asbestos tile. His fingers, sharp as knives, suddenly jammed into the edge's crack and flipped it up with force!

Below was indeed a dark hole half-covered by irregular stones and rotten wooden boards, barely large enough for one person to squeeze through. A stale smell of earth and a faint scent of moisture wafted out. Without time for a closer look, Ghost slid into the hole like a loach and reached back to restore the asbestos tile as much as possible.

The second after his figure disappeared, several swift dark shadows appeared almost simultaneously at both ends of the alley. The red laser dots from their gun barrels swept across the smoke-filled area, only to see the empty ground and the small jammer shell still emitting smoke.

"Report! Target used a jammer to create chaos in Alley G7, suspected of using the opportunity to escape! No traces found at the scene!" the arriving Dark Blade team members quickly reported, their voices carrying a hint of disbelief. Their surveillance was so tight; how could the opponent pull off such a vanishing act right under their noses?

Long Zhantian, who had already moved to the peripheral command vehicle, darkened his expression upon hearing the report: "Seal off the entire block and search inch by inch! He couldn't have vanished into thin air; he must have used some hidden passage or visual blind spot we overlooked!"

Meanwhile, the Ghost who had dove underground was now in absolute darkness and cramped conditions. This wasn't a formal passage, but rather a gap formed between a collapsed, silted-up old drainage pipe and the broken ceiling of an air-raid shelter, filled with slippery moss, mud, and choking dust. Curling his body, he turned on a miniature flashlight, the cold white beam illuminating the narrow space less than two meters ahead, filled with cobwebs and rubble.

He was in no hurry to move forward. Instead, he first took out a matchbox-sized device and turned on full-spectrum signal jamming (including his own). Only then did he carefully poke an extremely thin probe out from the crack of the entrance, which was connected to a high-sensitivity vibration and sound sensor.

Above ground, dense and light footsteps passed quickly, along with hushed communication sounds. The search was continuing.

Ghost waited patiently, like a predator lurking in its den. For the moment, he was safe from North Heaven Gate, but his trail was completely exposed. The opponent was surely mobilizing all forces to hunt him down.

But this exactly gave him an opportunity for reverse observation.

He held his breath and focused, using the sensor to carefully distinguish the rhythm and distribution of those footsteps above, the snippets of communication, and even the faint roar of vehicle movements. He quickly constructed a picture in his mind: the opponent's reaction speed, the scale of manpower deployed, the key search areas, the command and dispatch patterns...

"Professional, efficient, well-resourced, but... not invincible." A light like a data stream flashed in Ghost's cold eyes. "The search density in the east and north is significantly higher than in the southwest... There's the sound of a vehicle engine idling continuously in the southeast, possibly a reserve team or command node... They have some alertness toward underground spaces, but seem to focus more on known entrances and larger spaces, with insufficient awareness of naturally formed gaps like this..."

He was using the opponent's search operation to reverse-analyze their defensive habits, resource allocation logic, and potential weak points! This was the reverse thinking of a top intelligence analyst, turning his own crisis into an opportunity to peek at the opponent's patterns.

About twenty minutes later, the search on the ground seemed to have concluded a phase; the footsteps became sparse and converged toward a certain direction.

Ghost knew the opponent might have judged that he had already fled far away or was shifting to a larger-scale dragnet search. He gently retracted the probe, turned off the flashlight, and in absolute darkness, began to crawl forward slowly but firmly along this narrow gap that led to who-knows-where.

His goal was no longer Warehouse No. 3, nor any potential target hiding place. His goal had changed.

He had to survive and send out this failure—no, this precious intelligence about the opponent's security forces and operational patterns obtained through Viper and his own brush with death. At the same time, the suspicion in his heart regarding "Lin Mo" was no longer a suspicion but an almost certain judgment—someone who could set such a precise trap using technology and psychology to such an extent, that "Lin Mo," was absolutely not just an ordinary "technology provider."

He was very likely Patriot X himself, or at least his most core agent.

Inside fortress-1, Lin Mo watched the result on the screen: they had ultimately failed to lock onto Ghost, who had instead disappeared into the complex underground of the old city area. His brow furrowed slightly.

"He discovered the trap and escaped in a way we didn't anticipate," Lin Mo said to Director Long on the other end of the communication, his tone calm but carrying a hint of gravity. "This isn't something an ordinary agent could do. Director Long, we might have hooked a bigger, more troublesome fish than 'Viper.' Not only did he not fall into the trap, but he might have even felt out some of our 'pulse' through our reactions."

A suppressed cold snort came from Director Long's side: "I underestimated him. Don't worry, he won't get out of this city. I've already ordered the activation of the second-level grid search, including all historical underground blueprints and possible hiding spots. He won't be able to hide for long."

"No," Lin Mo suddenly shook his head, his eyes flashing with thoughtful light. "Perhaps... we can change our approach. Since he's so good at finding life and intelligence in desperate situations, then perhaps we can give him another piece of 'intelligence'... a piece of 'intelligence' that can lead him to where we want him to go, or force him to make the choice we want him to make."

Ghost's alertness and reverse tracking abilities had exceeded expectations. This cat-and-mouse game, because of the opponent's upgrade, had become more dangerous and... more interesting.